Existing single click entry systems that allow the user to click or select a portion of a document image and transfer data contained in the selected area into an application such as a form displayed in an Internet browser are known in the art. This function saves time, effort, and increases accuracy when transferring data from document images into single forms.
These applications let users transfer data from scanned documents or document images into Excel spreadsheets. This function increases the productivity of users who need to transfer data from a scanned document to a spreadsheet. However, the Single Click Entry systems do not enable the user to efficiently transfer data from multiple documents into a spreadsheet. In effect, the Single Click Entry systems do not create a mapping between a type of data and an area in the spreadsheet. On the contrary, these applications simply enable users to more efficiently copy data from a document image to another application. Furthermore, the Single Click Entry systems do not allow the user to transfer data from a scanned document directly into a spreadsheet; the user always needs to go through an intermediate step of viewing the scanned document and dragging data into the spreadsheet. The present invention remedies these shortcomings.
In particular, the present invention allows the user to transfer data from a scanned document directly into a spreadsheet. The invention also allows the user to import data from multiple scanned documents into a single spreadsheet, and it allows the user to specify where in the spreadsheet the data should be imported. This provides a further significant productivity increase for users transferring data from scanned documents into spreadsheets.